Nose
Fresh blackberry and blueberry aromas.
Palate
Nuanced notes of vanilla spice and Baker’s Chocolate. The wine has depth and structure on the pallet, but the ample tannins are both smooth and ripe.
Growing Conditions
Our primary goal is to make our wine representative of the character of the Stags Leap District Appellation.
The 2013 Malk Family Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon represents the excellent growing conditions that the 2013 vintage provided. The wine shows great fruit concentration
Harvest
Our grapes are hand harvested in the vineyard at dawn. As they are spread out on the sorting table they are still cold from the nighttime temperatures and only the finest clusters are de-stemmed and make their way to the fermentation tank.
Bottling
Bottled in May 2015.
Winemaking
The grapes will rest for several days in the vats to benefit from a “cold soak”, extracting beautiful fruit character from its own pure juice and skins.
As fermentation begins, the grapes will slowly pick up heat and the skins will begin to rise to the top of the fermentation vessel. In the early stages, we will gently pump the juice back over the skins to give the fermentation plenty of air and allow for excellent contact between the juice and skins. During peak fermentation activity, we may do the process several times each day and employ such practices as delestage, where we remove all of the juice from the tank to allow for complete extraction before returning the free run juice to the grape skins.
Aging
Following fermentation we will gently drain the free run juice from the tank and move the wine to French oak barrels. Here, the wine will undergo malolactic fermentation at cave temperatures as they age.
2013: 20 months in French oak; 70% new
